Jennifer Maerz blogs up some CMJ and goes to sweet highschool parties
I've been feeling my teenager roots the past couple weeks. Maybe it's the kick-ass rock 'n' roll high school birthday party that went down the night after dancing at an 18+ magazine bash, right after a couple 15-year-old punks opened a Budget Rock showcase .or maybe it's just that I still say things like "kick-ass." Either way, there was a lot to be stoked about musically since I last wrote ("stoked" being another word I still use from those underage years... there's a lot of them. What can you do?)

Speaking of the kids, I went to visit my younger sister Melissa in New York recently. This is someone I used to throw blocks of frozen food at when we fought as kids, but that's all bygones now. She's grown up into a very fine young lady -- a lady whose boyfriend lives on a street lined with giant bags of trash.

My sister and I both love and write about music, so it was only natural that we'd get sucked into the CMJ music showcases while I was out there. I'm kicking myself for not bringing a camera with me the first night I was in town - the Black Lips played the basement of a tiny café called the Cake Shop at like 3 in the morning. They went on an hour late -- during which time people got really smashed on Sparks and baby bottles of champagne and any personal space around the stage had completely evaporated. When the Black Lips actually played it was like uncorking a bottle that'd been shaking for 60 minutes straight. So much fun. But not caught on camera. Possibly for the best?

But I did have my camera out for the slightly tamer shows, like Melbourne's the Drones, who I've been spazzing out on for a couple months now.

Their songs can be kinda serious, lyric wise - there's a lot of gothic Nick Cave sensibilities in there, but the music is noisy as shit, like the Birthday Party meets Sonic Youth.

Live the Drones add a third layer, which is a wicked sense of humor. The few Australians I know are total wiseasses, and the Drones were no different. They cracked lines between every song, calling everything from their broken guitar strings (snapped one song into the set) to the unyielding mic stand a "cunt." When they play though, they're incredibly passionate.

By the third day in NY my sister and I were zombies. So we went on a dazed tour of the galleries in Chelsea. I wish I could remember the name of this one particular gallery, or even the name of the artist. But when it comes to proper nouns, my sister and I both inherited the memory bank of a goldfish. Anyway, the instillation was a sheer circus tent setup and you had to put this shower cap thingy on your feet to enter.

Once inside, everything was squishy and smelled like lavender. There were brightly colored, amoeba-shaped pillows everywhere. The pillows were filled with little balls and the floor had a bunch of foam underneath it. It was the cushiest piece of art I've ever been in. We stayed in there a long time.

Then it was back home to S.F., where I think I hit a personal maximum of five shows in two nights. Started off with a little reunion with some music buddies thanks to a show by Seattle's the Lights, who were in town at the Hemlock.

Imagine the Fall dropping the curmudgeonly bit and banging out some incredibly agitated post punk and you'd get close to the Lights. They're pretty unique in sound and style -- the singer has a deep baritone, an ominous bassline snakes through everything, and the drummer skillfully scatters the beats all over the place.

Then it was time for the first of many culture shifts, as we hit the Rickshaw for Gucci Time with Mesh Magazine. When we got there it was a jam-packed hip-hop party with DJs and local hyphy pro Trackademicks. Dude is super charismatic on stage.

From there things somehow segued into Lemonade, a hippie looking trio carrying masks and walking sticks who bang out ridiculously catchy dance jams in the style of Black Dice and Gang Gang Dance.

Lemonade is all beats/percussion and bass and echoing vocals that are so distorted the songs just smear into your ears and wiggle your legs into action. They're like a drum circle for people who hate drum circles a lot of banging on objects and getting the kids to flail across the dance floor.

Definitely psychedelic. I really dig these guys.

And then the DJs went right back into the hiphop, totally seamless -- you could dance to it all, all night long.

Saturday was day two of the annual local garage rockathon, Budget Rock, which was in Oakland this year at the always festive Stork Club.

So much fun - a marathon of music, a swap meet, a garage sale, a BBQ, and a hot dog eating contest. The consensus was that you could still catch a high rubbing the white dust off these mirrors, although I didn't see anyone quite make the effort.

Our Budget emcee was a sweet dude name Joe (he used to play in the Spits), shown here buddying up with Senior Hot Dog

The dog-shoveling was a little painful to watch. There were only a couple competitors committed to cramming as many fleshy rods of processed meat down the hatch as possible in five minutes.

So... Many... Hot... Dogs

But only one winner, the frontman for a band called the Touch Me Nots (they're a married duo, and I heard the wife cheer out when he won, "That's my husband! He ate seven hot dogs"... or whatever the final number came down to. It was really cute.

They're all about the woo-hoo'n, knee slapin', krazy punkrocknroll, and I totally and completely dug it. The RRAKs are a duo (two brothers) but the singer alone has enough manic energy to propel five bands combined. He was a jumpin' and a hoppin' and a hollerin' all over the stage with a lovely shit eating grin plastered all across his face. It's bands like this that made me fall for garage rock in the first place. If you're a fan of the Cheater Slicks, Bob Log III, the Coachwhips, Immortal Lee County Killers, and the like, these dudes are so up your alley.

And in case you have a hard time with song titles, as I always do, they keep the names short 'n' sweet. Songs are about "Boobies," "Orgasms," and "Chuck Berry" -- although "Panties in My Pocket" is definitely a crowd pleaser for a reason.

My instant enthusiasm meter for this band kinda high -- so when I hit a party back in S.F. late night and they were on stage there too, well, my weekend couldn't really get any better.

The party was at this amazing loft space downtown. I'm not sure how many stories it went up but it allegedly contained a hot tub and a huge bird cage on the upper floors. The ground floor alone was pretty sweet, though. The ex-punker who owned the place is a big collector of pennants and they were hanging everywhere.

The party was being thrown in honor of the daughter of the family who lived there. She was turning... 15? 16? One of those ages where I think for my birthday I was still renting scary movies and having makeover parties with my friends. I did not have a blowout bash with all the cool Birdman bands playing in my honor -- but then you take one look at this kid and you know both she and her mom rule the school. Really friendly as well.

The party was so much fun, people dancing to all kindsa rock n roll while the place was decorated like a prom for Rock n Roll High School

Gotta love the teenagers who rocked with the rest of us.

At the end of the night the Rock n Roll Adventure Kids got the birthday girl on stage, brought up a huge bag of spray confetti, passed out those cans of confetti, and played a song in her honor as the crowd shot streams of that goop into the air. It was insane. Spray confetti may have made a mess of my bed the next morning, but that night it was a pretty brilliant idea.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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